Questions as Emissaries

I recently listened to an interview with psychoanalyst Adam Phillips who was discussing kindness as a forbidden pleasure. The link is http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R911261000 if that provocative description makes you curious. One of his opening remarks helped me wonderfully with the bogey man of RELIGION, the thought of which sometimes makes the back of my head prickle in a nasty way. He said, “Religion has always been the language in which we talk about that which is most important to us.” That simple statement goes a great distance for me in unwrapping ‘religion’ to its bare essential nature—making meaning out of what we love in a context of ultimate mystery and uncertainty. How do we do that?? I think we’ve always begun with what sets us apart as humans—the ability to ask questions. Even asking the question, “What is most important to me?” begins the spiritual quest. The questions that surface as we live our lives—how long they will last, how to make life-changing choices, whether pain is a necessary part of growth, will it always be this hard, will it always be this easy, why me, why not me---these are all our emissaries outward into Mystery. They honor both our humanity and our individuality and either lighten or darken our way depending on how we treat them. Whether tacit or well- worked, our answers to these kinds of questions influence everything we do. I say, let’s bring out the questions and let them burn brighter, let them act as emissaries of connection between us and other people, as emissaries of hope and courage offered into the ultimate everywhere of Mystery. And just because we cannot finally know anything for sure about all of this, let’s be all the more intentional about loving our questions for themselves and where they will lead us, “further in and further up” into the transformation of having discerning eyes for what we are about in the world and hearts and minds practiced in openness.

Come and grace us with your life-long or recently emerging or purely spontaneous questions. We make room at Macrina each time we meet to bear witness to and honor them with you.

Shelley Chesley for the Macrina Community and the Serious Joy behind it all.